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XFX 9800GT Review

Testing:

At OverclockersClub.com, we use a set of benchmarks to stress the graphics card. We will use a series of newer gaming benchmarks, as well as some that are more seasoned, to show how well the XFX 9800GT compares to some of the other enthusiast video cards on the market. We'll be using single GPU models exclusively to show just how much the 9800GT brings to the table. All driver settings and clock speeds will be left at factory defaults for both the CPU and GPU in an effort to minimize or eliminate any variables that could impact the results. The test system used in this review is listed below. After testing the card at stock speeds, I'll overclock it to see what kind of performance can be gained. All testing is done with the default settings in the respective control panels, as well as default settings in the BIOS of the motherboard used in this test. For this round of testing, our drivers have been updated to 177.79 for the nVidia cards and Catalyst 8.8 for the ATI video cards.

Overclocking:

Overclocked settings:

XFX 9800GT 750/1062

The 8800GT used to be a good overclocker, as seen in our review of the Asus 8800GT TOP earlier this year. I was expecting no less from this XFX card since it's newer and should carry at least some minor component upgrades, even though this one is the vanilla version. I was able to reach a healthy 750 MHz on the core, just 10 MHz under Asus's top end version, although still an impressive 150 MHz over the stock speed. That's a 25% increase, not too shabby since it's basically free extra performance. The GDDR3 clocked up to 1062 MHz, right on par with most GDDR3 overclocks. In order to get the clock speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU core and 1062 MHz on the memory I used an application called RivaTuner, which lets you clock the card high enough not be software limited. As you can see on the GPU-Z screenshot, even at 75% fan speed the card ran quite warm at 81 Celcius, although it was a quieter than a stock cooler set at the same speed.